The driver of an SUV that struck a city sanitation worker this morning in East Liberty told police she didn’t see the man due to sun glare in her eyes.

The man was struck about 8 a.m. while collecting garbage near Black Street and Negley Avenue. Police said he was pinned between the hopper of the truck and the woman’s SUV and was in critical condition at UPMC Presbyterian this afternoon.

Accident investigators, who have not filed charges, will return to the scene tomorrow morning to recreate the incident, police spokeswoman Diane Richard said.

She said the wounded city employee is a 56-year-old man from the North Side and the driver is a 36-year-old woman from Stanton Heights but did not provide their names.

I’m not taking her side however I have to say that I leave my house going east on a street aligned in the same direction, several blocks away and the glare has been horrible lately. It’s no excuse I know, and I don’t know how you miss a garbage truck but guilty until proven such I guess.

I came here to post about this, because I walked past it this morning on my way to work. There were cops and DPW workers everywhere, and the entire street was blocked off, even parts of the sidewalk.

Sure, there may be a glare, but if she is from stanton heights, she drives this direction EVERY day. Her vehicle was really really smashed into the garbage truck. Glare or not, she was also near a red light at the intersection of Black and Negley, where I have repeatedly nearly been hit when trying to cross the street when I have right of way in a cross walk.

I think she is a bit full of shit. She shouldn’t have been speeding down black to make the light, and in that specific location there are several large trees and tall houses. There may have been a glare, but I also think she is probably negligent in this case.

My best to the sanitation worker and his family. He had a very close call and I hope he recovers. A friend of mine was killed in a similar accident.

Oh man, this really sucks. It could easily be someone from the same crew who services my neighborhood and they are always really great and friendly.

Also, maybe because I’m on the early end of the route, THEY COME THROUGH LIKE CLOCKWORK! I notice this in other parts of the city, too. So, if you see a garbage truck in action in the city, you can count on the fact that there are two or three workers nearby and take that as your cue to slow the F down. They are often looking out for one another and even when I carefully pass a garbage truck on my bike, it is not hard to make eye contact with the driver. Also, the winter glare is very seasonal and predictable. Argh!

…judging from the damage to the front of that car, she was going in excess of 25 mph. That’s the sort of metal rearrangement I see in 35 mph wrecks.

I also would like to propose we ask a set of standard questions in cases like this: How could she have accomplished that trip by bus, bicycle and/or on foot? How did it come to be that a car was necessary in the first place? Define necessary.

To clarify how clueless this lady was: it wasn’t that she didn’t see a man in an orange jump suit- she didn’t see the F’n huge garbage truck parked in the middle of the street! My bet is she was doing something more akin to flip-flop boy, and is using the sun as her get out of jail free card. If only the “system” would treat these as seriously as DUIs. What’s the moral difference?

No skid marks. There are some oily tracks from the garbage truck rolling or being pushed forward about 3 ft in front of the oil spill, but no sign of emergency stop effort by the driver. Also note the lack of post accident cop spray paint to denote where things came to rest. Starting off to be a solid investigation.

I was a little confused as to why they were investigating the next morning instead of that day. So although I ride through that intersection almost daily, it is usually in the dark, and when it is or isn’t dark, I am looking at crappy drivers and not the houses, so I can’t tell exactly where this is. Which of the two streets is this on and which direction was the person going?

yeah my first thought was that it was the glare from her cell phone. the thing with these types of crashes that doesn’t seem to be talked about is how did every other driver that went past this point manage to safely pass the huge garbage truck and the highly reflective worker, while this person didn’t?

Quizbot, remember wheather man told that morning a lot of windshield scrapping should be done? If you do not scrape off everything or your windshield got a little bit foggy then it creates a second layer can trap almost all light and dissipate it if light comes under certain angle. In this case a whole windshield acts as a light fixture.

@Mikhail: you would think that it’s the vehicle operator’s responsibility to ensure that the vehicle is in safe working order – including driving with a clear windshield. I looked through PA vehicle code for a minute but couldn’t come up with anything obvious.

i just drove through that accident scene tonight, the same way the woman was driving when she struck the man/truck. at the site of impact, i was slowed to about 15 mph, since the intersection ahead is a T. i know that the speed limit is 25mph there, but as it approaches said intersection, drivers should really be slowing down to make the turn. if she was going 25 there, she was going too fast in my opinion.

There is a law, enacted just a couple of years ago, that clearly specifies that a moving vehicle must be clear of all snow/ice, or risk being ticketed. That means no “clear the windshield just enough to see out.” The whole windshield must be clear. Similarly, all snow must be scraped free. That was a pain in the butt 2 years ago when I had to scrape 2 ft of snow off the tonneau cover of my pickup.

Legally, the windshield has to be free of any ice/frost if the car is moving.

Edit: The law took effect January 1, 2007. Here’s a link to a story on the new law:

not excusing it in any way, but the sun moves, a lot, all the time (ok, the earth moves, but we’re talking relative to the earth). So, sometimes, it’s only glare for a moment for a day or two of the year. It’s not like every 8:13 for months the sun will cause glare here. By the time the skies are sunny enough to tell, there may not be glare at that time in that place.

My personal commutes, by the time the glare was consistent enough to have learned to flip the visor ahead of time, it was no longer applicable.

That being said, barring high speed roads with turns around hills like highways, if you’re going a reasonable speed typically you can tell that glare is coming (shadows, intense bright light ahead, these are all pretty obvious at residential speeds). I totally think this in this case this is an admission of guilt rather than some kind of excuse for innocence.

None of this will undo what’s been done. But is there anything we can do to get the admission of guilt to be seen as just that, and not an excuse?

“An 84-year-old driver who struck and seriously injured a Waste Management worker last month in Mt. Pleasant Township has been given a traffic citation.

Lawrence Zelenak of Southwest was cited for driving at an unsafe speed before District Judge Roger Eckels after a state police investigation into the Jan. 24 accident.

Zelenak’s car struck and seriously injured Matthew Kelly, 27, of Homer City. Police said Kelly had just emptied a garbage can on Hecla Road near Academy Lane when he was hit.

The victim was pinned between Zelenak’s Chevrolet Cavalier and the garbage truck, police reported. Police said although the truck had its lights activated and Kelly was wearing a reflective vest, Zelenak did not see Kelly.

Kelly suffered multiple leg fractures and was taken by medical helicopter to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. He is no longer listed as a patient there.”